A blog written in the dead of night and delivered to you in a brown paper bag. It’s a cornucopia of tidbits, rants, and observations for the discerning eye. Good luck with all that. Now, for something completely different!

This may turn out to be a hard won lesson in civics. A University of Minnesota student named Max P. Sanders decided to offer his vote for the next presidential election up for auction on Ebay with a starting bid of $10. Anybody see a problem with this? Yes, it’s illegal. His listing encouraged buyers with the words “Good luck!” and “You’re country depends on You!” It appears he flunked English 101. Now that the Minnesota prosecutors have gotten involved, he’s claiming it was all a joke. “We take it very seriously. Fundamentally, we believe it is wrong to sell your vote,” said John Aiken, a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office. “There are people that have died for this country for our right to vote, and to take something that lightly, to say, ‘I can be bought.'” Yes voting, you know, that thing that most Americans ignore on election day. It’s refreshing to know somebody out there takes it seriously. So seriously in fact that Sanders was charged with one count of bribery, treating and soliciting. If found guilty, he faces up to five years in prison a hefty $10,000 fine. To add insult ot injury there’s an uploading fee from Ebay for the auction. By the way, no one bid on the auction. Talk about a bust all the way around. I bet we won’t be seeing that one again.

CZECH ARTIST’S NUCLEAR EXPLOSION PRANK

I have to admit that I can appreciate a prank as much as anyone. I even like to pull a few myself. This one is too weird for words, but we’re going to try. A group of artists hacked into a national television weather broadcast to show a fake nuclear explosion in the Czech mountains. Members of the Prague-based Ztohoven art group admitted tampering with equipment at the public broadcaster Czech Television so viewers watching a live panoramic shot of the Krkonose, or Giant Mountains, in June last year saw a flash of bright light and a fiery mushroom cloud rising on the horizon. That would have scared the crap out of me. Seven artists were acquitted of spreading false information in March but the state prosecutor appealed the verdict. An appeals court in Hradec Kralove, east of the capital Prague, overturned the decision last week in a ruling made public Monday, court spokesman Michal Strnad said. The court ordered a new trial for a date yet to be set. If found guilty, they face a maximum three-year jail term. The group claimed the aim of its project was to show how reality could be manipulated by the media. I don’t see why they couldn’t have picked some other subject than nuking the neighborhood. Czech Television called such stunts “improper” and said they could scare many people. Ya think? In December, Prague’s National Gallery awarded Ztohoven the new NG 333 prize for young artists. The 333 stands for the size of the cash prize – 333,000 koruna or about $22,000. I think they should get their money back.

MEN CAUGHT GROWING POT IN CEMETERY

The caretakers of a Vietnam cemetery were busted for growing pot within the plots. Police took in Nguyen Manh Hung, 44, who heads the caretaker team at the cemetery in Hanoi’s outer district of Hoang Mai, and Ho A Lau, 46, after the authorities found cannabis plants grown on a 25 square meter (82 square feet) patch, the Vietnam Labour Confederation-run Lao Dong newspaper said. That is a seriously lot of weed. Police have detained the two custodians who were about to harvest their first crop of cannabis from a cemetery in Vietnam’s capital Hanoi. Rookies, it figures. The fate of these two is uncertain as Vietnam has basically a double standard towards drugs. Vietnam has strict drug trafficking laws, including in some cases the death penalty, but it has long been used as a transit point for trade in heroin, hashish, opium, amphetamine pills and other illegal drugs. They may just punish them for being dumb enough to get caught. They seem to have a “as long as it doesn’t come to our attention, we’re OK with it” attitude.

FED-EX GETS IT WRONG, RECIPIENT ARRESTED

Since we’re on the subject, never send your dope Fed-Ex. They just might go to the wrong house. A mistaken delivery tipped off police to a 200-pound shipment of marijuana. That’s alot of pot! Police tell The Baltimore Sun they learned about the shipment when it was delivered Tuesday to the wrong resident. That’s when they developed a sneaky plan to catch the dude it was really going to. Authorities posed as FedEx employees and arrested the shipment’s intended recipient, 30-year-old Richard Gwatidzo. That’s what you get when you trust a shipment like that to a delivery service. What ever happened to a brown paper bag in the dead of night? He was charged Thursday with possession of a large quantity of a controlled dangerous substance with intent to distribute along with other drug related charges. He should have been charged with stupidity along with a substandard IQ.